Eric Cress
Principal

Eric believes real estate development is about providing people access to the resources they need to thrive.  Passionate about the intersection of people, environment, and entrepreneurship, he embraces development of the built environment as an entrepreneurial endeavor that shapes our communities and people’s daily lives - determining where and how we live and work.  

Eric serves as President of UDP, overseeing company strategy and supporting daily operations.  He also leads UDP’s investment committee.  He serves as President of Portland’s second-largest business district, the Central Eastside Industrial Council.  He is a former ULI Northwest chair, a ULI’s SSDC National Product Council member, and serves on the Portland Mayor’s Council of Economic Advisors.  

Before co-founding UDP, Eric worked with Pacific Bay Investments in Berkeley, California.  An engineer by training, Eric worked as an Application Specific Integrated Circuit Designer for Cypress Semiconductor, Leapfrog Toys, and Maple Optical Systems and a researcher at the National Science Foundation’s Research Center for Computational Field Dynamics.  Eric holds seven patents and two publications for his ASIC design and error-correcting code research work.    

Eric has an MBA from The University of California, Berkeley.  Eric earned  BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Mississippi State University.